Large Hadron Collider - back on line

Sleipnir

Those folks at CERN have got the LHC back on line and have successfully established a particle beam in one direction the whole way around.

One chap, called Chris, has gone through all of the publicly available information on the CERN websites and pulled the most interesting one together on his LHC Portal website. http://www.lhcportal.com/ Even the guys at CERN use it as you can see from one of their comments on their blog

According to Chris we are good to go. He appears to have a better set-up than we do. (Actaully we are waiting for cryogenics - we'll then do a full cycle of the machine and set-up for beam this evening.)

Much of the information is live so if you want to check the cryogenics situation for example, you can go to http://op-webtools.web.cern.ch/op-webtools/vistar/vistars.php?usr=LHC2

r3nu4l

I've deleted some rubbish posts. This isn't After Hours folks!

Delighted to see the LHC online again. Apparently the first protons around the ring are only being pushed through to warm up the machine Can't wait until they start doing full-on collisions, although it'll probably be some time until we get results.

Son Of A Vidic

Considering the money spent and planning that went into the LHC, last years shutdown was very embarrassing. Let's hope that's the last of the oversights on the scientists part. But can we justify in todays world the money that's been spent on the discovery of the Higgs boson Particle?

Turtwig

medicman2009 wrote: »

Considering the money spent and planning that went into the LHC, last years shutdown was very embarrassing. Let's hope that's the last of the oversights on the scientists part. But can we justify in todays world the money that's been spent on the discovery of the Higgs boson Particle?

?
I'm actually amazed that that set back they suffered was the only one (One faulty wire?). Kudos most go to CERN, it's not like they're building a house that has been built 1000s of times already before. This is brand new stuff (and some awesome magnets).
As for the justification, well the money was available before the recession and of course we can justify it. This thing could shed light on anything or nothing, we don't know but its testing our fundamentals of physics and that could be more revolutionary than anything.

r3nu4l

medicman2009 wrote: »

But can we justify in todays world the money that's been spent on the discovery of the Higgs boson Particle?

It's small change compared to the money being spent on War by the UK alone...or (in relative terms) the money being spent by certain banks on bonuses etc. Arguments on the spend are pretty pointless right now. When we get the results over the coming decade we'll have a much better idea of whether it was 'worth' it in terms of financial return on investment. Remember too that even when the data is analysed, it could be years later before any practical purpose is found but without research we stand still and never advance.

marco_polo

It is now officially the worlds most powerful particle accelerator.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18213-lhc-becomes-most-powerful-accelerator-of-all-time.html

2028 GMT, 29 November 2009. That's when the Large Hadron Collider became the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth.

Inside the 27-kilometre circular tunnel at the CERN particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, a beam of protons was accelerated to energies of 1.05 teraelectronvolts (TeV), smashing the previous record of 0.98 TeV held by the Tevatron accelerator at Fermilab, near Chicago.

"It's excellent," says Steve Myers, CERN's director for research and technology. "People are tired but elated and extremely happy, because everything is going much faster than even the most optimistic of us dreamed of. We are really in fine form."